


The Hand Once Dealt

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: F/M, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:49:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9296969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: He could never forget those eyes, or so he thinks. And he knows this strange sly little maid with her glittering eyes and her dark hair, who might be called Cathy or Janet or Jane or anything at all, she is the one who has stolen Vinculus away. And Childermass is the one who will get him back.A collection of one-shots telling a single overarching tale.





	1. The Hand Once Dealt

**Author's Note:**

> The first story here was written for an alternate format challenge (in this case an unusual POV) at the Writers Anonymous forum over on Fanfiction.Net. This will be a collection of one-shots told in varying styles, which will tell a single overarching tale.
> 
> All comments are welcome and hugely appreciated. Please note that this story contains some sexual content.

 

**The Hand Once Dealt**

 

Imagine, if you will, a deck of cards. I dare say this will not be a difficult task for you, since you have the look of an inveterate gambler; the hand life has dealt you has cast a shadow of ruin over your face. Ah, you frown. I beg your pardon, but you'll see in time. Perhaps it has not happened yet, but the hand once dealt cannot be undealt.

Imagine the major and the minor arcana, dog-eared and well-used, clutched in the filthy hands of a man to whom we emphatically do not belong. His name is Vinculus and his untrimmed nails are black with grime. He leaves an indelible grease smear on the face of my sister, _L'Impératrice_ , as he plays a hand of solitaire with rules impenetrable to all but this book of magic made flesh. He is a trickster and a fraud, who spends most of his time trying to tup the scullery maid, a slatternly, lazy thing, with sly bright eyes, who knows more of magic than he ever will.

The hand she has been dealt is a strange one, full of joy and heartache and power and weakness. Worse than yours, although who can truly reckon these things? Lives cannot be weighed and measured as an apothecary might measure his wares, each blessing balanced against each sorrow.

He sits in the parlour of Dr Foxcastle's house. The rain strikes against the window in sheets, and yet the room is warm, if beset by shadows, chief amongst them the maid who watches, hidden from his view. She has escaped from the kitchen, where the cook has been bewitched into scouring the pans herself, never questioning why. Vinculus is unaware of her presence, unaware of anything but his game, the rules of which he makes and unmakes according to whether or not he is winning.

Only when he hears a tread behind him – not the maid, but another man – does his attention shift from his game. And still he does not turn, continuing to count out my brothers and sisters as if by random, until at last he turns my face upwards and the man behind him pauses, his eyes narrowing. He is disreputable-looking, this man, with long ragged black hair which he wears tied back. His name is Childermass, and in this moment all his attention is focused on a forgotten memory, like the flicker of a minnow in the depths of a murky pool.

A twisted hawthorn in a landscape of snow and mist. A touch upon his eyes, his lips, his heart, his hand. A flock of ravens dark against a sky the colour of bone.

There for an instant, then gone

We belong to Childermass, in as much as we can ever belong to anyone, my brothers and sisters and I. He created us, copied from the cards of a sailor in Whitby, and he's fool enough to believe that makes us his. As if anyone could own us, we who are a mirror upon a world where the Raven King once again strides the dark, rain-swept hills, where the sun gutters in its dying embers, afraid of the wolf.

He is a clever man, but destined to ever be on the outskirts of greater men, to serve and to observe and never anything more. He has some knowledge of magic, and he has seen the writing written on the world, but he cannot read it. He knows enough magic to walk wreathed in shadows, although not quite so well as the maid, who watches him now with interest, challenging him to see her.

He cannot.

"Those are mine, I believe," he says to the rogue.

Vinculus sweeps the cards together. He handles us roughly, and thrusts us wordlessly over his shoulder. Childermass takes the pack, and vanishes from the room.

And once she is certain he is gone the maid slips from her seat and moves towards Vinculus, who still seems unaware of her presence. His neckerchief is loose around his grimy neck, and a faint mark can be seen beneath it. It might be taken for a birthmark if you do not look too closely. I advise you not to. Her finger brushes against it and only then does Vinculus stir. More than a little drunk, he pulls her onto his lap.

The maid lets him kiss her. He has new clothes now, but still wears his old filthy rags. The housekeeper cannot understand it, for no matter how many times she throws his old clothes onto the fire, every time she turns around that ragged filthy coat is back, never so much as singed. The maid's clever fingers seek out a hidden pocket no one but he should have been able to find and pulls me free. She regards me thoughtfully, turning me over in her long slender fingers. For a scullery maid her hands are remarkably smooth and white.

I bear the image of a hanged man, sketched on the back of an old tedious letter and pasted onto card. The writing can still be seen, faint words visible over the hanged man's face. Vinculus kept me back from the rest of the pack when he returned it to Childermass, but if the maid suspects why she does not seem to care.

She bends her head and begins to whisper into his ear. Her hand slips beneath Vinculus's shirt to rest on his greasy back. She imagines she can absorb the meaning of the writing on his skin through touch alone. She hopes this is true, for no one ever took the trouble to teach her to read. But she is sly and can slip about the house unseen. She knows men more learned than her cannot decipher the language of the King's Book written on the vagabond's back. She has as much right as them to try.

When Childermass returns, he finds the parlour empty. The room is suddenly much brighter, although the rain still strikes against the glass. The shadows have gone, and with them Vinculus and the maid.

* * *

Do you wonder how an ignorant, ill-educated young girl could snatch away the sole remaining book of magic from under the long noses of a society of magicians? Well, how does a woman with nothing but her wits and her youth achieve anything? With guile and persuasion and the harbour between her legs.

But perhaps when you consider the tedious Learned Society of York Magicians, who devote more of their time to bickering amongst themselves than to the pursuit and practice of magic, is it so hard to believe a young girl with dark eyes could tempt away a man like Vinculus?

Harder to believe, perhaps, that she would _want_ to.

(And here my sister, _Tempérance_ , interjects to remark she does not understand why the society worried so; it wouldn't be long before the young girl realised her mistake and tried to give him back.)

There is uproar when Vinculus is discovered missing. Much outrage and pointing of fingers and apportioning of blame, most of it aimed at Childermass. But he has his supporters, every bit as vocal, who point out that without Childermass the King's Letters (a fancy name, by which they mean Vinculus) would never have been brought to the attention of the Learned Society of York Magicians in the first place. "He could," one young man says, "have kept the fellow to himself and none of us would ever have known."

A rather more timid man attempts to speaks up. He clears his throat several times before anyone bothers to shut up and listen. "C-can a person truly be stolen in England?" he says, his eyes darting about the room, never quite seeming to settle on any one place. "A book can be, it is true, but it seems to me this Vinculus fellow is a... a man first and a book second. If he chooses to leave, then perhaps... then perhaps..." By now almost every face has turned his way and this makes him more uncomfortable than being talked over. His face twists in doubt as if he doubts his own words. "...Perhaps we should let him?"

At this more outrage, more shouting, more chaos. And in the midst of it all, Childermass sits, with less than half an ear on the proceedings. He is accustomed to the noise and bluster of magicians and knows it's seldom worth listening to a good seven-eights of anything they say. He thinks of a room filled with shadows, of dark glittering eyes that watch him with interest. And of the kitchen where it feels like someone is missing.

Not even pretending to listen to the discussion now he pulls the remainder of the pack from the pocket of his coat and begins to lay out the cards. One card in particular, my sister, _La Lune_ , draws his eye. This one he copied from memory – a dog and a poorly drawn wolf howl at the scowling moon. He is being addressed, but he does not notice. He gathers the pack and slips it into his pocket, before leaving for Dr Foxcastle's house, and in particular the kitchen.

It takes him a while to tease out the memory of the sly little scullery maid. He himself cannot remember when he last saw her doing any actual work, which is odd, because the scullery maid is usually the most put-upon member of the household. But this one he only ever seemed to see slipping about the house like a shadow.

Like a _shadow._

"Who is she? Where did she come from?" he asks, and no one seems to know the answer. She turned up one day like a stray cat, and no one thought to ask her what her references were or whether she belonged. They gave her food and a bed to share with Grace, one of the parlour maids, but Grace soon found that the way the moonlight fell through the window cast such peculiar shadows across the wall she was quite unable to sleep. She did not ask herself why the moonlight never troubled her before the new maid came. So the new maid had a bed to herself and no one questioned it for a moment.

He asks her name and no one knows that either. Grace thinks her name Mary, Mary thinks her name Grace. The footman believes she might be called Cathy, and the cook insists her name is Jane or Janet. Perhaps Judith. Something of the sort, anyway, and since she always answers to whatever she is called, it hardly seems to matter.

Childermass knows they are all wrong. He fingers _La Lune_ , which he seems unable to put down. Every time he slips it back into his pocket, somehow he always finds it in his hand again. Because her name is... her name is... A strange thing, this; he cannot remember.

But he could never forget those eyes, or so he thinks. And he knows this strange sly little maid with her glittering eyes and her dark hair, who might be called Cathy or Janet or Jane or anything at all, she is the one who has stolen Vinculus away. And Childermass is the one who will get him back.

* * *

I will not describe in detail Childermass's exhaustive search of the length and breadth of the county of Yorkshire. How he chases rumours from the East Riding to the West Riding and back again. Through towns and villages and cities, until finally he finds himself drawn to North Yorkshire, where the desolate moors lie beneath a sky bruised with slate-coloured clouds.

He knows he is close when the country lanes he rides along start to twist in on themselves and he finds he has circled back on himself.

He frowns with the mist thickening around him, and for the first time he tastes magic on the air. There is a labyrinth laid on this road. Perhaps he should have noticed it earlier, but this is more subtle and artful than the magic worked by Strange and Norrell. Not as strong – he breaks the spell with ease – but had he not been looking for it he would never have known it was there. The magic of a woman, he thinks, one who knows only wild magic. He wonders how powerful she could be now that she has Vinculus, and he hardens his heart against her, redoubling his determination to return the book to its rightful place at his side.

And he rides on along a country lane bordered by a centuries-old hedgerow, but his sturdy horse shies, and he senses something following him. A musky stink thick in the air, and the sound of something very large and very hungry breathing.

Childermass calms his horse, and he tells himself it is just the mist playing tricks on him. As he rides on something crosses the country lane ahead of him. It is a large black dog, the size of a small horse, and it turns its shaggy head, regards him with burning eyes. And he freezes, his breath mingling with the mist.

An illusion, he tells himself, set to scare him. And as he thinks this, the dog vanishes so completely he might almost believe he never saw it at all.

The tiny village he comes to is called Whitcross, a handful of cottages which huddle in a valley, sheltering from the biting wind that rages down from the moors. The place seems desolate and empty. At the crossroads stand a mournful cross of white stone, and an inn, but no stable-boy appears to take his horse. He dismounts, leads his horse to the stables himself, where he finds the boy sleeping in the straw, a hand flung carelessly across his face. No amount of shaking will rouse him.

Inside the inn is comfortable, but all here are sleeping too. A man slumbers at the bar, his cheek resting in a puddle of spilled wine. In the corner sit a man and his wife, propped against one another, while a fat spider weaves its web in the gap between their necks.

More magic.

And he can feel the weariness settling upon him. It tugs gently at his eyelids, whispers in his ear how tired he is, how long and far he has journeyed. He should simply sit for a while and rest his eyes. Just for a moment or two.

He sinks down, and the chair beneath him is quite the most comfortable chair he's ever had the good fortune to come across. He rests his cheek against his hand, but something pricks at his cheek. He holds a card in his hand, my sister. _La Lune_.

He stares at her. And I know I said he was a clever man, but at this moment he is sleepy and sluggish and half-bewitched. He does not see.

Perhaps, he thinks distantly, if he simply closes his eyes for a few moments, everything will become clear. His eyes close.

A crack from the fire interrupts his rest. His eyes snap open, and the spell is broken. He stares at my sister once more, slips her back into his pocket.

She is here.

* * *

The air is still thick with magic, but now he has broken the spell, it has no power over him. In the corridor, he stops outside the door, beset by a sudden fear that the barghest, the black dog he saw in the lanes, will be waiting for him within with its burning eyes. Instead, what he finds inside is far more terrifying.

Vinculus lies on the bed, naked and snoring and asleep like the others. Beside him sits the maid whose name he cannot remember, dressed only in a shift pulled up to her thighs. Her legs are bent and she's leaning forwards, her breasts pressed against her knees. It takes him a moment to realise she is copying the marks from Vinculus's body onto her own. Her arms, her legs, her chest, all are scrawled with thick black ink.

He's never given the little scullery maid much thought before. Perhaps, if he'd thought at all, he might have pictured her angry to have been tracked down. But when she looks up, his resolve falters. He finds himself thinking the theft of a book cannot be such a terrible thing after all.

"I can't do it," she says, and there is something lost and frightened in her voice.

Slowly he steps inside the room. The expression in her eyes shifts from naked heartache to something more guarded. Childermass moves to the table by the fire where he finds me waiting. He is already reaching inside his coat pocket for the rest of my pack.

Childermass sits and lays out a hand, turns the cards one by one. The air in the room seems thick with fear and magic; he finds it hard to think. Again the same cards: _La Lune_ , _Le Pendu_ , _L'Amoureux_. A soft sound as she draws closer, and why, he wonders, does the sound of her movement make him think of ravens?

"What does it mean?" she murmurs. A hand reaches over his shoulder. Her fingers hover above _La Lune_. Interesting that she would be drawn to that one, he thinks. He glances at the markings on her arm, and he feels the same shivery sensation he feels when he looks at the King's Letters on Vinculus's body. She may not be able to read or write, this thieving little magpie, but she is a fine copyist nonetheless.

She draws in a sharp breath as he seizes her wrist to study the marks. They smudge at his touch, but even smudged they thrill with power. They whisper to him, scratching at the inside of his skull. He has tried copying out the King's Letters before, but on paper they lose their meaning, are nothing more than marks. Yet here, etched upon her skin, they itch at him with the promise of magic.

"Did you do this?" he demands, twisting to face her. Her eyes are wide and frightened, yet defiant. He cannot tell how old she is. Sometimes she seems in her twenties, sometimes eighteen, sometimes as young as fifteen. But all the while her eyes are dark and glittering and fearful, fixed on his, her thick brows drawn down in a scowl. She is afraid of him, he realises and he loosens his grip, reluctantly, as if he fears she might turn into a bird and escape up the chimney.

"I tried to."

"Why?"

"Why does anyone do anything?" she asks, bitterly. "Because I _wanted_ to. Others take what they want. Why can't I?"

"Can you read it?"

She shakes her head. "I thought I might be able to learn if I had a copy," she says, and glances at him sharply as if he might be laughing at her. He isn't. "I would've brung him back. Eventually."

(And here my sister _Tempérance_ interjects once more. I shall not bore you with details of her lengthy diatribe, but her meaning could be boiled down to a single phrase: _I told you so._ )

"How–" The question catches in his throat. "How did you manage such a thing when the foremost society of magicians in England could not?" He follows the writing up her arm. And she stands mutely, letting him examine her. She obligingly, if resentfully, pushes aside her hair so he can see the back of her neck. There the writing fades into a meaningless tangle. She has done the best she can with a mirror, but the markings are distorted, many of them reversed, their meaning lost. Like a book, he thinks, with pages missing. And dismay prickles at him, that a book should remain incomplete. He feels a stab of lingering guilt at his part in the destruction of Jonathan Strange's book.

"You can take him and go," she says, her voice suddenly weary. "I was a bloody fool to think this'd work."

"It has worked," he says. "These are the King's Letters, but I do not know how you have managed it."

She looks at him with sudden ferocity. "I can't finish it. It's no good if I don't finish."

"Then let me help you." He speaks without knowing what it is he's about to say, and a moment later he feels a strange shivery sensation, as if this is the reason why he has chased her across Yorkshire and back again: not to bring Vinculus home, but to help her finish.

And while he is thinking this, her eyes linger on his face. She thinks that she does not quite like the look in his eyes. He has barely looked at her in the past – she has learnt to hide too well – and she has never seen this hungry light in his eyes. It does not suit him.

It is the book he wants. But she intends to make the book part of her, to have its magic sink deep beneath her skin, as deep as the marrow in her bones, and if he takes the book he'll have to take her too. And he could. Of all the magicians she has met in York, he is the strongest. And he is a Yorkshireman; he belongs to the Raven King.

"Why?" she finally asks. "Why would you want to help me? I stole him from you."

"Well..." This is not a question Childermass knows how to answer, so instead he echoes her own words back at her. "Why does anyone do anything?"

It seems to satisfy her. Or so Childermass thinks, at least.

* * *

They work for hours, while Vinculus snores on the bed beside them. Magic and firelight and the shadows weave around them, casting a spell of their own. Her back bared, she sits on her haunches, the dirty soles of her feet turned up towards him in supplication. Her skin is translucent like the finest paper waiting naked for the ink. Each time Childermass pauses to check the letters on the vagabond's back, he notices how her even breathing seems to stop each time he touches the nib of the quill to her skin once more.

He etches a series of tiny markings around the nape of her neck, each one the size of a ladybird. He has to move closer, his hand gently resting on her upper chest to hold her still and all the while the magic in the room seems to build, seems to press harder on him with each passing moment.

(If you are observant, you might have noticed that in fact time does not seem to be passing. The tallow candles gutter in a non-existent draft, but they have burned down not a fraction more than when Childermass first entered. But Childermass, who normally is an observant man, has not noticed. His attention is fully occupied.)

As he copies whorls and spiralling phrases around the nubs of her spine, he pushes aside the bunched fabric of the shift an inch at a time, bearing more of her back to the firelight and to his quill. And now he pauses, stares at the mark he has just made in the small of her back.

"What is it?" she says, startling him. It is the first time either of them has spoken since she bared her skin to him. "You've stopped."

"There is something..." He hesitates, leans across to Vinculus and studies the mark he has just copied. Then he moves back to the corresponding mark on her skin.

It is different.

The mark on Vinculus resembles an upturned letter 'J', with a dot beneath the overhanging arch. On her skin, it has been turned sideways and the dot is now a series of three dashes, piled precariously one above the other. He has made a mistake, although he cannot see how such a thing could have happened. And the closer he looks the less certain he is that this is a mistake, but something _meant_.

"What is it?" she demands, a note of fear entering her voice.

"The writing is different," he says, "but I cannot say why..." He moves between her and Vinculus, finding more places where the marks do not match. And at first he thinks it might be a trick, something to prevent the book from being copied, but the more he studies the writing on her skin, the less he believes it. This means something, the changed writing on her skin, but what? He rolls Vinculus over so roughly the man almost topples off the bed. And then moves around in front of her, examining the places where she copied the writing herself, her hand much less neat than his own. And here too some of the symbols are different.

"Mr Childermass, _please_."

He glances up at her, sees the fear in her eyes, how her fingers tighten on her shift. "I'm sorry."

"Have we made a mistake?"

"I do not think so," he says slowly. Although he's by no means convinced that is the case. Along with the shadows and the firelight, mistakes seem to be woven into the very air around them. He breathes them in with every breath as he puzzles it out. And then the answer comes to him. "It's _you_."

"What do you mean?"

He takes hold of her arm, moving it so the muscles flex beneath her skin. He doesn't notice how still she goes as she allows him to manipulate her. Her upper arm is plumper than Vinculus's, without the vagabond's ropy muscle. He thinks of the curve of her hips and buttocks, of her breasts. "I think the body forms part of the book. Skin and muscle and fat and bone, they all combine with the marks. That's why we have never been able to copy the words."

"But we are copying them now," she says.

"I do not think we have been copying at all."

She draws in a breath. "What do you mean?"

"I think I mean that when we have finished you will be another book entirely."

Their eyes meet. She is the one who breaks the silence, her voice faltering, fearful. She is afraid of the hunger in his eyes, and for the first time the shadows crowding the room frighten her.

"This was a mistake. You should take him and..." Her voice trails off. Her eyes fix on the wall. And the observant viewer might notice his hand has closed gently on her wrist.

"We cannot stop now," he tells her. " _I_ cannot. This is the work of the Raven King."

"The Raven King," she says, her bitter gaze resting on him. "You're a Yorkshireman through and through, aren't you? John Uskglass really is your king."

"And I'm proud of it. He's your king too."

She glares at him as if he has insulted her. "I'm not from Yorkshire," she says although her heavy Yorkshire accent suggests otherwise. "I'm _Irish_."

"Yes, you sound it," he says, smiling a lop-sided smile.

She scowls, muttering something about how John Uskglass is not her king, that he will never be her king, because she is Irish and owes her allegiance to Conchobar mac Nessa, who is more a king than either John Uskglass or the king of England will ever be and any fool would know it. "As if _you_ ," she completes, lowering her voice to a ferocious whisper, "would recognise a king when you saw one."

"I'd recognise John Uskglass."

"Would you?"

His smile fades. Somewhere in the back of his mind a memory flickers. He realises he is gripping her arm tightly and releases her. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. She shakes her head as if it hardly matters, and there is silence again. "Can I continue?"

In reply, she picks up the quill and places it in his hand.

* * *

Now they no longer work in silence.

"Where did you learn your magic?" he asks, as he cups her breast and lifts it so he can write on the pale skin beneath. "From your master's library, I expect, while you were supposed to be working."

"Where did you learn _yours_?" she demands, in a voice that silences him. "And he's no master of mine."

"He paid you. That makes him your master."

"I never took a penny from him." She tilts her head. "And what are you, Mr Childermass? Servant or master or magician?" She wields the question like a knife. "You have his mark on you."

"Whose mark?" He's only half-listening, intent on his task, trying not to think about how he has her breast cupped in his hand, about how his writing encircles her nipple, about how hard it is to write on a woman's breast when the skin there seems to pucker and tighten at the kiss of the nib. He has to concentrate hard on the task at hand. As it were.

"The Raven King's," she says, and the nib stops moving, leaving a blot of ink on her skin. He dabs it with his thumb without thinking, having forgotten her nipple was there. He raises his eyes to hers as she says, "John Uskglass. Who else? You bear his mark."

"I do not."

"Aye, you do," she says, lifting her hand to his face. "Here and here." He closes his eyes as she touches her finger to his eyelids. Her finger trails down the silvery scar on his cheek to press against his lips. "And here," she says. "And–"

He catches her hand, presses it over his heart. "Here?" he asks.

She turns his hand over, circles her thumb in the well of his palm. Her touch sends rippling shivers through him. His own hand – the one cupping her breast – copies the movement of her thumb, heedless of how he smudges the ink.

She draws in a ragged breath. He drops the quill and pulls her into a kiss. There is a moment of hesitation, but whether on her part or his, I cannot tell you, but soon there are clothes being discarded and kicked aside, hands and lips and tongues and teeth on skin both clean and marked with ink, and the air of the room thickens with a musky scent older than magic itself. There are fingernails scratching up spines, and the gasping of breath, and time seems to stop altogether for first one then the other, just for an instant, before it appears to flow once more. And neither of them sees how the spilled ink forms the shape of a raven against the sheets.

(And my sister-brother _L'Amoureux_ is looking rather smug.)

At some point one of them – perhaps both – shoves Vinculus from the bed with rather less care than ought to be shown to a book. He now lies snoring in his stupor, crumpled on the floor. Neither of them care.

The maid lies in the crook of Childermass's elbow, her face half-turned towards him.

"I've smudged you," Childermass says. "I'm sorry..." He still cannot remember her name. "...Jane?" he hazards.

He thinks she smiles, and takes that for confirmation that he has guessed her name correctly. Of course he's wrong. It is a trick of the light, a play of the shadows. She is not smiling at all, and her name is not Jane.

And he kisses the curve of her neck, smudging the last few letters there. It does not seem to matter. When he slides his hand over her skin he can feel the letters responding to his touch. Even though the writing has been ruined, the book remains. "We still have some work to do." He hesitates. "Although we should remove the enchantment from the inn. I haven't eaten since I left Skipton. You needn't worry about paying for the room. I shall take care of it."

She doesn't answer and again he takes her silence for acquiescence.

He kisses the tender skin beneath her ear. "Where did you learn your magic?" he asks. "You didn't say."

"My mother taught me."

He frowns. "Your mother knew magic?"

She shook her head. "The stones and the rain taught me magic. My mother showed me how to listen to them."

"And where did your mother learn that?" he asks, and he cannot help a touch of indulgence creeping into her voice, because he does not believe her.

"From the fairies," she says.

The tale she tells him when he presses her is rather like the labyrinth she set to trap him. Full of convoluted asides, and turnings back on itself and evasions, at least half of which are deliberate, because this tale is not something she really wants him to know. Childermass is a clever man, used to the confused logic and meanderings common in books of and about magic, and he can follow her story, but I suspect that you are not nearly quite so clever as Childermass so I shall paraphrase.

She told the story of how her mother was snatched away into one of Faerie's many kingdoms. A year and a day was how long it seemed to her mother, but when she stumbled back along one of the King's Roads, half-starved and dressed in tattered rags, every part of her shrivelled and shrunken except for the bulk of her pregnant belly, much longer had passed than a year and a day. Her world had shifted in the blink of an eye.

She was snatched from Ireland and found herself in Yorkshire several hundred years later, and it is in Yorkshire where the young maid was born. But her mother was bitter at having been stolen from her home and husband (even if she never liked either all that much before she was stolen away), and filled her daughter's head with every tale of Ireland she could remember and a good many more she invented on the spot.

And once he has heard her tale and puzzled through it, sorting out the truth from the nonsense, Childermass nods. "So you're half-fairy. Well, that explains it," he says, thinking of her laziness. Of her complete disregard for the ownership of property. Of her willingness to trick others into doing her work for her.

"That explains what?" A hint of danger in the way her body feels against him suggests that he would do well to be careful about what he says.

"Your careless heed of your duties," he says, smiling. "You were a terrible servant."

"I am not a servant at all," she hisses, eyes flashing.

Her sudden rage takes him a little aback. "There's no shame in being a servant."

"Speak for yourself. I am not a servant." Her rage vanishes as quickly as it appeared. Now there is only pleading in her voice. "My mother was a servant in Faerie. I will not be a servant. And I'm not a fairy."

"I did not say you were. I said you were half-fairy. It's not the same thing at all."

"I'm not that either. I'm not a servant and I'm not a fairy and I'm not a half-fairy and I'm not from bloody _Yorkshire!_ "

Perhaps Childermass could be forgiven for wondering what the hell he has managed to get himself into. He kisses her brow, his tone mollifying, "You are none of those things."

"What am I then?"

He assumes it is a rhetorical question, but it's clear she's waiting for an answer. "You are a thief," he says, picking his words carefully. She nods as if such a thing were self-evident. "And a woman. And a magician."

"A 'magician'," she repeats, sounding rather dubious.

"A powerful one," he says, "Or you would be, I think, if you took the time to learn."

"More powerful than you?"

"Yes," he admits, reluctantly. "You could be."

She thinks about this for a moment, thinking about all the magicians she has met in York. "Do they always argue so much?"

"You mean magicians?" he asks, and she nods. "In my experience, they usually argue a good deal more."

"I don't think I want to be a magician. It seems like a lot of work." She yawns, stretching out her body, and he watches the firelight playing over her skin, thinking how like a fairy she is. Changeable and dangerous and fundamentally indolent.

"You're wrong, you know," she says, running a hand down between her breasts. "I don't think this is the work of the Raven King."

"No?" He kisses her shoulder. "Whose is it then?"

"Yours."

He goes still. "'Mine'," he repeats. He feels a longing he has never quite been willing to admit, not even to himself, a dream of becoming more powerful a magician than either Mr Strange or Mr Norrell. A strange expression shifts across his face, and she watches him, wondering what she has done by bringing them both here. Then his expression clears and he smiles his twisted sideways smile. "Ours," he corrects, and kisses her again.

"My mother told me a story once," she says. "I think it was the only story she told me that had nowt to do with Ireland. She said two magicians'd change England forever."

"She meant Mr Strange and Mr Norrell," he tells her, although he wonders if this is true. He thinks how she has left her mark on him already. The ink-stains on his fingers, his stomach, his thighs, where his skin has pressed against hers. We are two magicians, he thinks. Perhaps...

But that is a thought he cannot let himself finish.

Outside, a dog howls. She stiffens. "It's nothing," he says. "Just a dog."

She wriggles free and goes to the window, stepping over Vinculus's sleeping form. "There are no dogs," she whispers. "They're all asleep."

"Your barghest then." His eyes are closed so he does not see how she stares at him. "I forgot to ask how you did that. Was it an illusion or something more? It put me in mind of a summoning spell in _The Language of Birds_."

"I set the labyrinth," she says, and something in her voice makes him open his eyes. "And I set everyone in the inn to sleeping, but that's all I did."

He swallows. "The barghest... wasn't you?"

Slowly she shakes her head. Outside the barking howl of the dog comes again, and he thinks of a shape in the mist. He mutters a word he normally would never have used in the presence of a woman. She is trembling with fear, and he stands, crosses to her, wraps his arms around her. Something moves in the courtyard below. She shudders, presses her face against his chest.

"It's come for me," she says. "He's sent it to bring me back. Please, Mr Childermass, I don't want to go."

And through his weariness and fear, he thinks that since he knows every inch of her body and more besides, that she should probably stop calling him 'Mr Childermass' and call him 'John' instead, but it does not seem to be something he can articulate.

"Who has sent it?" he asks, and she snorts.

"Emperor Buonaparte," she snaps. "Who'd'you bloody _think_?"

A chill ripples through him. A twisted hawthorn tree. A touch upon his eyelids, his mouth, his heart, his hand. "Jane–"

She glares up at him. Her eyes are glittering and dark and contemptuous. "That is not my–"

The window shatters inwards and the shadows writhe. He grabs for her, telling himself that he's afraid for her safety.

Her breast presses against his hand as she struggles against him and he shifts his grip, tells her that she's safe, while the shadows flutter up the wall. They look exactly like ravens.

She plants her hands against his chest and shoves. "You bloody fool," she spits like an angry cat, but he won't let go. She attempts a knee to his private parts but he's fought dirtier fighters than her and he evades her easily. Still it's enough to allow her to escape his grasp. The fire seems to cast shadows rather than light, and she vanishes between them, hidden from view.

"Jane..."

"You're his," she says. "You were always his, and you're too blind to see it."

And she's gone, the shadows rippling and swarming with her. He starts towards the door, freezes as a hot stink envelops him. There is something else in the room, something great and hulking and monstrous, and he can smell its musk, its hot stinking breath. It is the barghest, the monster that has walked out of the nightmares of his childhood, out of the stories his mother would tell about the huge, hungry dog that stalked the streets at night and ate naughty little boys who weren't brave enough to do as their mothers told them.

He thinks of a dog with burning eyes. Then he thinks of the maid, stumbling across the moors dressed in nothing but– well, nothing but her _skin_ and the words of a book neither of them can understand.

He grabs his coat and follows her, pulling it on as he leaves the room and stamps down the stairs.

Outside he bellows her name, takes a moment to roundly curse every damned magician he's ever had the misfortune to meet, starting with Mr Norrell and ending with himself. Then he sees a patch of the moor which seems darker than the rest. He runs after her, a chill mist on his skin. He hopes she has not set a labyrinth to trick him again. Tired as he is, he's not sure he would be able to break it. Her first attempt was half-hearted; if she really tries–

But she does not try. She is naked and the night is cold and he has forgotten how lazy she is. He finds her hunched with her arms wrapped around herself, her cheeks wet with tears. He shrugs off his coat and wraps it around her shoulders, kisses her forehead when she leans against him, shivering.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"It's all right. We'll go back to the inn," he says. "You'll lift the enchantment, we'll eat and then we'll finish the book."

"It's too late for that, Mr Childermass," she tells him, and he opens his mouth to tell her she should call him John when he sees the King's Road, half-hidden in the shadows of an over-hanging rock. One of John Uskglass's roads, which lead between this world and his kingdom in Faerie and all the worlds in between.

And she is pulling away from him, the little maid. She slips through his grasp as if she were made of shadows, and each step takes her further away from him until she stands on the road.

Then she stops, and glances back at him, thin and pale, clad in nothing but his coat. And perhaps it is a trick of the light, how before she vanishes he sees a man standing at her side, his hand resting on her shoulder. Childermass is almost certain he has seen him before, but for some reason he cannot place his face, which is thin and handsome and as pale as hers.

But he knows he will never forget her face when she glances back at him, how her pleading eyes are filled with sorrow and how they make his heart ache.

And then she is gone.

By the time he returns to the inn, he has forgotten her completely.

The inhabitants now sleep a natural sleep, and it seems unlikely that they will be entirely sanguine if they wake up from an enchanted slumber to find an ill-tempered and completely naked Yorkshireman in their midst. The female member of the sleeping couple is already batting irritably at the poor innocent spider clinging onto her nose in desperation.

In his room he is confused by a loud snorting which seems to be coming from nowhere. It takes him a few moments to identify the source: Vinculus, curled up asleep by the side of the bed. The window has been shattered, the heavy curtains barely stirred by the wind. The bed's covers have been thrown back, and the sheets are filthy, smeared with what looks like ink.

He finds more ink stains on his body when he dresses, on his chest, his thighs and various other unexpected places. As for the ink stains on his fingers, well, they are not so remarkable, although it is odd to find them on his left hand as well as his right. He cannot see the stains on his lips and tongue, and by the time he checks his reflection in a mirror, they will have worn away. He will never even know they were there.

Stranger still he cannot seem to find his coat. This irritates him more than anything. He liked that coat. It was a very good coat, with plenty more wear left in it, and he glares at Vinculus as if he is entirely to blame for the wreckage of the sheets and the shattered window and the puzzle of the ink stains on his skin and his missing coat. Vinculus snorts, scratching at his belly in his sleep.

Childermass turns away in disgust, and sits at the table. He reaches for the pocket of his coat, remembers with a curse that he isn't wearing it. He feels a sense of something having been stolen from him. The cards, he thinks, but that doesn't seem quite right.

No, he realises. It was a book.

But he must be thinking of Vinculus who stole himself away. Only that doesn't seem quite right either. He remembers something soft against his hands, remembers ink smearing beneath his fingers, and someone's breath warming his skin.

He wishes he has his cards. He has been left only one, a single card lying face-down on the table. He stares at it.

Vinculus gives a final explosive snort and wakes up. "You've found me then," he says, rather peevishly.

"I have."

"And you've come to take me back to York?"

"I have."

Vinculus considers this, then gives a heavy sigh. His gaze wanders around the room, lingering on the ruined sheets. He casts a crafty thoughtful eye at Childermass's back. "Where's she gone?"

"Where's who gone?"

Vinculus pauses. "I must have been dreaming," he says, scratching his grubby neck. Then he frowns. "Why am I naked?"

Childermass ignores him. He turns over the card, the last remaining of his lost deck, and if you are cleverer than I take you for you might be able to guess which one it is.

My sister _La Lune_ , in which a dog and a poorly-drawn wolf howl at the scowling moon. And if the dog appears larger and blacker than before, Childermass barely notices. All his attention is focused on the face of the moon, half-turned towards him. He has an impression of heavy brows drawn low over dark glittering eyes, but the look in those eye is at once pleading and frightened and sly and bitter. It is a face he feels he knows. Perhaps someone he knew in his youth and has forgotten?

It can't be. He would have remembered those eyes. He's certain of that.

 


	2. One For Sorrow

**One for Sorrow**

 

Hurtfew Abbey had been a handsome house in Yorkshire, but uprooted and misplaced beneath a night sky that rippled with ribbons of light, it looked eerie and unnatural. It stood at the edge of a vast lake that stretched as far as Jonathan Strange could see, at least as far as the horizon, and he had a strong sense that it went on much further, that it would keep going on and on, not stopping until it had swallowed up the world.

The water was choppy with waves as if stirred by a strong breeze, but the air was still. And set in the churning water, a series of stepping stones wound away to a far-off island wreathed in mist. Overhead the lights in the sky shimmered across the strange constellations only visible in the eternal darkness which had gathered about the house and the two magicians like a shroud.

The other magician in question was safely tucked away in his library, having no great expectations of this particular escapade. In fact, he strongly disapproved.

Strange stared at the nearest stone below him, then glanced back at the house, wondering if perhaps he should not have listened to Mr Norrell. And it was this momentary doubt that stung him into taking the first step, and then to take the next step, and the next. The stones were very narrow, the largest about a foot and a half in diameter and most were a great deal smaller. None of the stones were in any great shape, many of them crumbling, worn away by the water, which seemed to grow rougher around him as he travelled.

That water... He was beginning to develop a strange nervous fear of it. It was milky and murky, and rippled, not only with the waves but also with the suggestion of something coiling beneath the surface, watching him with malevolent curiosity.

But despite his fears nothing happened, although as he made his final hopping jump onto the white-shingled shore of the island, he had to admit he did not find that particularly reassuring. As the pebbles crunched beneath his feet, his gaze caught on one particular stone, the size of his fist, because it almost looked like...

He bent down, saw with a shudder that it was in fact exactly what it appeared to be: the skull of a human infant, small as his bunched fist, picked clean and polished to a gleaming ivory. And now he saw that all the pebbles were not pebbles at all, but bones. Bones of every size and shape, human and animal and everything in between, shifting beneath his feet like the shingle on Brighton beach.

He lifted his gaze to the vast arch ahead of him and to the cloistered garden that lay beyond, filled with statues looming out of a drifting mist that seemed to move as if it were alive. Ringing the inside of the crumbling wall were strange greying trees, naked skeletal branches stretching up towards the night sky. The air was bitterly cold. He glanced back, but Hurtfew Abbey was lost in the mist.

Since there had not been that sickening elastic snap of the world and there was no sign of Mr Norrell, it seemed he had not yet gone too far.

Or perhaps, he thought with a shiver, he _had,_ although not in the way he first meant.

Within the confines of the wall the cloistered garden appeared much larger than it had seemed from the outside. And the things he thought were trees were not trees, or if they were they had been petrified many centuries ago. They were now the colour of sandstone, dusty and gritty to the touch, with no leaves, only spreading branches, and the ground bulging with their roots of stone.

In the centre of the garden black and white paving stones had been laid out like a hexagonal chessboard, and on it stood forty or so figures, both male and female, of every age and nationality, dressed in every conceivable way and some of them not dressed at all. They stood so still they had to have been statures, but it took him a moment to realise they were alive, and it was their breath that filled the air with that strange writhing mist.

They were locked in combat, here a woman in evening dress plunging the blade of a stiletto dagger into the heart of a boy of perhaps thirteen, while a man dressed as a Jesuit priest wrenched her head back by the hair to expose her throat, which he was about to slit. Elsewhere some of the figures had already succumbed, and lay injured or dead on the tiles, blood pooling in icy little puddles.

Strange circled the board, careful not to step over the edge, but making his way over the ground warped by the tree roots until he had done a full circuit and returned back to the arch. There he leaned against one of the stone trees, frowning.

Interesting, he thought, but not altogether helpful. Perhaps Mr Norrell had been right. Perhaps–

Something fluttered down to land by his feet. Aside from him and the strange seething mist it was the only thing of movement in the garden. Surprised, he stared at it, then stooped to pick it up. It was a magpie feather. And then another came spiralling down.

He glanced up and saw a girl staring down at him. Only her head and her small hands were visible, fingers curled over the edge of the branch on which she perched. She had a pale face, with heavy brows and dark angry eyes. “Hullo,” he said, startled.

“Who are you?” she asked, and Strange's surprise deepened, because she had a Yorkshire accent, which was not at all what he would have expected of a fairy. He hesitated, because names were powerful things and it could be dangerous to give them out, particularly in a distant corner of Faerie as strange as any he'd seen before.

“I am the English Magician,” he said, thinking that there could not be too much danger in claiming that as his name. There was, after all, at least one more English Magician in Faerie, and a great many more back in England. “And–”

“Oh!” She glanced upwards towards the sky. “Well, that explains the darkness. I did wonder. Where's the other one?”

“The other one?”

“The other English Magician,” she said, her voice slow and patient. “You are Mr Strange, aren't you?”

“Oh! You have heard of me...”

She raised a finger sharply to her lips, her gaze fixed intently across the cloistered garden. He looked around. In one of the trees a raven perched on a stone branch. At his glance it ruffled its feathers and Strange shivered at a memory of the vast black eye of the Raven King's emissary appearing in the library window. And meanwhile the girl shifted position in her tree, her eyes intent as a hunting cat's. She plucked a jewel the size of a hen's egg from her hair, weighed it thoughtfully, then flung it at the raven. It struck the branch, and the raven took wing with an outraged croak and vanished into the darkness.

“Ha!” the girl cried, the sound triumphant. And she grinned a terrible savage grin.

“Was that wise?” Strange wondered aloud. “Ravens belong to John Uskglass.”

“Well, it serves him right, sir,” she said, glaring after the raven. “For _spying_.”

Which was, thinking about it, really rather an _unnerving_ thing to say.

“You shouldn't be here, you know,” she remarked, still staring at the darkness. “This is a dangerous place for Christians. Even for magicians.” She paused, thinking for a moment. “Especially for magicians, come to think of it.”

Privately Jonathan Strange agreed. “I have no choice,” he said, gloomily. “I had heard this grove–” He paused, glancing around at the motionless figures, at the cold lifeless trees, “–if it can be called a grove, belonged to a powerful all-knowing oracle who might be able to answer some questions of vital importance.” He glanced up hopefully. “I don't suppose that's you?”

A slow startled grin spread across her face. “ _Me_?”

He sighed. “I didn't think so. You don't strike me as an oracle. All knowing or otherwise. It seems we shall have to keep looking for Merlin's tree.”

“Sorry, sir.” She didn't sound particularly sorry. “But you won't get your answers here. People don't come here for answers.”

“Do you know where the oracle I speak of is?” he asked, feeling a brief spark of hope.

She nodded, and lifted a finger as if to remark on something. But instead she raised it up and pointed silently to the sky. He looked up, not altogether sure what he was expecting to see. There was nothing other than the unfamiliar (although sadly less unfamiliar with every passing day) starlight overhead and the rippling ribbons of light. “What does that mean?”

“It means if we don't leave now we're buggered,” she said.

There was a silky sound, and a swathe of fabric dropped down in front of him, pooling on the ground. It took him a moment to recognise the fabric as having been woven from magpie feathers, glossy black and white. Her bare feet dangled in front of him and then she dropped too, landing lightly on the ground. She was small and slight, and dressed strangely even for a fairy. Her gown was also of magpie feathers, worn over a kirtle and stomacher richly embroidered with black work and beads. Her hair was piled up atop her head, and a delicate circlet weaved in and out of her hair, decorated with tiny black birds. More jewels were wrapped around her neck, ropes of priceless black pearls. And yet over it all, over the strange gown and the jewels and the finery, she wore an ancient black coat. A man's coat, which was far too big for her, and which had probably never been fashionable even when it was new. It reached almost to the ground, bunching on the train of her gown.

She was like no fairy he had ever seen, but she moved with an expectation that he would follow her, and when he didn't, she frowned at him with an air of fear about her now.

Strange had been distracted by a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He glanced around, but he saw nothing but the figures and none of them were moving. Only... had they changed position? He was sure they had. The woman in the evening gown had pulled her dagger free from the boy's chest, and her throat had now been opened up. Frozen as she was, she seemed to wear a dark choker around her slender neck. The blood gleamed blackly on the blade of her dagger, and it was as if... it was as if...

The girl drew in a sharp terrified breath. “Sir!”

“In a moment,” he told her irritably. Because couldn't she see he was occupied? He just had to get a little closer, that was all, because he could not see from here.

She grabbed at his arm. “Sir, we have to go!”

He pulled away. “ In a moment, I said. I just–”

And then he felt the sensation of something surging towards him, something vast and terrible, and his apprehension sharpened to a pin-sharp feeling of terror and panic. He looked down, saw that he was seconds away from stepping onto the chessboard... The girl hauled at him, her eyes very wide and frightened, and he thought that she didn't act much like a fairy at _all_...

She made a sound of frustration, and spun around, running beneath the arch and towards the shore. She gathered her train up as she went, darting nervous little glances up at the sky. Following her, Jonathan Strange looked upwards but still could see nothing. She started on the bridge of stepping stones, hopping from one to another with nimble ease. And he was about to step onto the first stone when he heard a noise behind him, a terrible, savage noise, of ripping and tearing, the clash of metal against metal, and the crunch of metal into bone, and nothing else, no cries of pain or any other sound. The urge to look around was almost overwhelming and he saw the girl glancing back, her eyes wide and frightened.

“It's all right,” he told her impatiently, and still the noise was going on behind him, that rending sound of slaughter. “Go on.”

She stared at him, and then obeyed, her skirts trailing in the water. He was certain the weight of her dress would have her unbalanced in a moment, but it hardly seemed to bother her. Strange looked back, and the instant he did, the sounds ceased and there was nothing but the figures in their motionless murderous tableaux, with more corpses on the ground, dead.

He turned his back on the island and hurried after the girl.

And something was slipping through the water now, long and serpentine, its back breaking the surface. He jumped from step to step, knowing that it was keeping up with him, and just as he jumped from the very last stone onto solid ground, there was a sudden flash of a long coiled body, scales gleaming wetly in the starlight, an impression of row after row of sharp needle teeth in a gaping jaw, and then whatever it was had gone, plunging back into the depths of the lake.

He repressed a shudder. “Well, that was not as enlightening as I had hoped it would be,” he remarked.

“Told you,” the girl said. She wasn't taking much notice of him, was instead staring at Hurtfew Abbey with an air of idle fascination. She did not seem at all confused to see an English country house standing in such a desolate landscape, as if it was the sort of thing she saw all the time. “People don't go there for answers. It's a terrible place.”

“Well, why do they go there then?”

“Mostly they don't go there at all. Not if they can help it. Mostly they're put there.”

“I see,” he said. “And were you put there?”

“No. I went there on purpose.”

“Why would you have done that if it was such a terrible place?”

“I was hiding.”

“Hiding? Why would a fairy need to hide? Who were you hiding from?”

She turned her head and fixed him with those strange black eyes. Her accent might be uneducated, but there was a strange proud off-kilter air about her. She stared at him as if she was thinking not about her answer but whether she should dignify his question with a reply. “From anyone that might come looking,” she said, a faint insolent note to her voice. “And I'm not a fairy.”

A suspicion crept gradually through his mind. He thought of her accent, of the strange old coat, and he found himself looking not at a fairy at all, but at a young maiden, fragile and half-feral, who must have escaped from a _brugh_ and been unable to find her way back to England via the King's Roads. “You are a Christian,” he said, feeling a sudden rush of pity for her. Dear God, she looked so _young_. “One who has escaped from a fairy enchantment. How long have you been in Faerie?”

“A year and a day,” she said with a shrug. Which of course meant precisely nothing at all.

 

###

 

Strange treasured these moments. The instant when he moved from the strange changeable airs of Faerie to the deceptive calm inside Hurtfew Abbey. It still contrived to smell of England – of dust and furniture wax – and it was easy to lie to himself, to imagine he had been released from his enchantment and had returned home (to England at least, if not to Ashfair or to the house in Soho Square). Just for a few precious minutes until he happened to glance out of a window and see the constant unending darkness wrapped around the house.

And a strange country house it was without servants, with whole wings left unused, their lives confined to a handful of rooms, the library and their bedrooms and very little else. The silence was absolute, with no sound but his tread and the soft whispering of the strange girl's dress and the train of her gown rippling around corners like an army of ants marching in their wake.

The girl seemed entirely unconcerned by the labyrinth that led to the library, the library where Mr Norrell was inevitably sitting in a high-backed chair, bent over the inevitable book. In this instance, Strange noted, Sutton-Grove's _De Generibus Artium Magicarum Anglorum_. Together they had mended the devastation caused by the Raven King (and to a lesser extent by Strange himself) as best they could, which was to say they had returned the books to their shelves and swept up a bit. The splintered remains of the table still lay in a pile, and by the cold grate of the fireplace lay another entirely separate pile of raven feathers.

“Well?” Mr Norrell began. “Was it as–” And then he looked up, saw the young woman and uttered a soft, startled little noise. He shrank back into his chair a little while she circled around the library, paying the books only the briefest of glances, as if they held little interest for her. “Mr Strange,” Mr Norrell said faintly, “Why have you brought a fairy here of all places?”

The girl stopped somewhere behind his chair, her lips parted in an expression of indignation as Mr Norrell attempted to crane his head around the side of his armchair, trying to catch sight of her without her noticing.

“She is not a fairy, sir,” Strange said, and the young girl gave him a solemn nod of thanks. “She is a Christian. I believe she has escaped from a _brugh_ and found herself lost.”

“I'm not lost, sir,” she said, starting her circuit again. “I wish I was. I know exactly where I am.”

Strange hesitated, glancing at her. “You want to be lost?”

“It's only when I'm lost that I can find my way,” she explained, and while Jonathan Strange frowned at her, somewhat puzzled by this answer, Mr Norrell nodded as if she had made perfect sense. “I'm trying to get to Ireland. I thought I found it once, but it turned out to be _Liverpool_.” And again she flashed that indignant expression, before stopping at the fireplace. She drew in a sharp breath and dropped to her knees by the pile of raven feathers. 

“Why on earth would you want to go to Ireland?” Strange asked, and she glanced at him, looking confused. 

“Because I'm Irish,” she said in her Yorkshire accent, as if this was the simplest question in the world and she thought him very odd for asking it.

“Ah. Of course. And may I ask your name?”

She cast him a weary look. “I have already told you my name.”

“I can assure you you have not.” He was quite certain the subject of names had not come up, apart from the moment when she had guessed his. It was true that fairies were often cagey about giving their true names, as were many magicians, although he couldn't see why this strange lost maid, Christian as she was, should refuse to give hers. He glanced at Mr Norrell, who continued to stare at the girl, his expression shading from nervousness to something more akin to puzzlement. “Well,” Strange said, “I know you will think me intolerably rude, but perhaps you could repeat it.”

She gave him a look. Silence.

“Mr Strange,” Mr Norrell said, sitting forwards.

“Of course,” Strange said to the girl, now with the slightest touch of aspersion, “if you would prefer _not_ to tell me your name–”

“Mr Strange,” Mr Norrell said, a little louder, “she has told you her name. She did it just now.”

“I beg your pardon?” He glanced at Norrell, then back to the girl. “No, she didn't.”

“I am afraid she did,” Mr Norrell said, and the girl nodded.

“Well, what was it?”Strange asked Mr Norrell.

“I cannot tell you. I believe she may be under an enchantment. A spell of obfuscation, perhaps?”

“Ah, like the one noted in Ormskirk?”

“Possibly. Although I was thinking more of a similar spell in _The Language of Birds_. The spell in Ormskirk is not nearly so powerful as to–”

“Excuse me,” the girl called out. They both stopped and looked at her. She was sitting in the pool of shadows at the edge of the room by the pile of raven feathers, holding on in her hand, twirling it between her fingers. With her gown and train twined around her, it was hard to tell where she ended and the shadows began. “I'm afraid you're wrong, sir,” she told Mr Norrell, when she had his attention. “I'm not under an enchantment at all.”

“I'm afraid is is highly likely that you are,” Strange began.

“It is the world that is enchanted, not me.”

There was a brief silence. Strange glanced at Mr Norrell, who looked quite as astonished as he did. “You mean the whole world? Are you quite certain?” he asked. The girl nodded, her face calm. The feather in her hand spiralled almost hypnotically. Strange looked back at Mr Norrell. “Could a fairy manage that? And more to the point why would they bother?”

“It's possible...” Mr Norrell said doubtfully. “Although I have never heard of such a thing. Fairies are, after all, naturally lazy and indolent, as well as capricious and untrustworthy. Why one should bother to go to such an extent as to enchant the entire world, when it would be far easier simply to enchant the single person in question, I cannot say. Although perhaps–”

“It was not a fairy that set the enchantment,” the girl said impatiently. “It was a man.”

“A man?” Mr Norrell echoed faintly. “You mean a magician?”

She nodded.

“I see,” Strange said. “And may we ask the name of this magician?”

She remained silent, staring at him with unblinking eyes. The candlelight glinted on the beads on her stomacher, the feathers in her dress, the jewels in her hair. The only motion was the feather twirling between her fingers.

“Perhaps your inability to speak his name is part of the enchantment too?” Strange asked. And still she did not answer. He glanced at Mr Norrell again. “Well, I know it wasn't me. And can I take it, sir, that you played no part in this?”

“Of course I did not,” Mr Norrell said irritably.

“So who remains? Of all the practical magicians remaining in England–” He paused briefly at a disapproving sniff from Mr Norrell, “–who would be powerful enough to cast this spell on a strange young woman with jewelled magpies in her hair and why?”

“You are assuming,” Mr Norrell said, “that the spell was cast by a current... _magician_ , and of that we are by no means certain, Mr Strange. In fact I am quite sure that not one of the practical magicians remaining in England today would be able to do such a thing, certainly–”

“Not even Mr Childermass?” Jonathan Strange commented, and received a pained look for his troubles. Neither one of them saw the young maid lift her head sharply at the name.

“–Certainly not without access to a extensive library of magical texts, of which none now exist,” Mr Norrell completed.

“Ah, so you are sure the magician in question must have been one of the Argentine magicians? Perhaps even an Aureate?”

“Oh, I am quite sure. In fact, there is precedent. There was a school of thought amongst the Aureates that to cast even a protective spell was to endanger the subject. The only question is–”

“Excuse me,” the young woman said again. Strange swung towards her, while Mr Norrell appeared faintly put out at the interruption. “Did I hear you say you were looking for Merlin's Tree?”

“Why?” Strange asked. “Do you know where it is?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But I might know someone who can tell you.”

 

###

 

And so to yet another world of blood and slaughter, of a land that was field and city and bridge and jungle and every landscape that ever was. A field beneath a starlit sky, littered with the corpses of the slain. And even though he saw the world now bleached of colour, in varying shades of black and grey, Strange knew the uniforms were scarlet and the ground beneath his feet was red with blood. The air smelled of gunpowder, and was still taut with the screams of the dying, but everything was still.

And on, picking his way through the corpses, the rats, the metallic tang of blood in the air, focusing only on taking step after step, as the world shifted around them.

He walked through a field which he somehow knew was England, and another field which wasn't, where the grass was knee-deep and filled with poppies, leaving dew beading on his breeches. He walked along a dusty road through an arid empty land, past a hulk of twisted metal, and through a swamp of corpses half submerged in mud that sucked at his boots. More corpses than he could count. So many it made him dizzy.

And still he kept walking, focusing his mind and his heart on Arabella.

The maid flinched at the sight of a carrion bird, stripping flesh from the face of a corpse. She looked away, shuddering, and in silence Strange placed his hand on her shoulder. She glanced up at him, an unreadable look in her eyes, and they walked on.

And on. And on.

The corpses changed again, but somehow they never really changed. They were just people. Countless people. He could not understand how so many people could have died this way. The slaughter, past, present and future. Nothing but death and bloodshed, and he wondered if bringing back English magic had ever saved a single life. If his actions on the Peninsula had changed a damned thing? If not for him, would the slaughter be worse? He couldn't see how anything could be worse than this.

And so to a final battlefield, and two men locked together in battle. One man's skull had been cleaved with a sword, as he thrust his spear into the chest of another. Blood still shone wetly on chain mail armour, and Strange had the sense of something ancient and momentous having happened here.

His composure seemed to have deserted him, because he'd asked questions of the dead before and it had not ended well. So instead he stared at the maid and he wondered how she had come to know all this. How long must she have been wandering in Faerie that she knew her way around the King's Roads so well? And why had she chosen to guide him in the first place?

“It might not be worth it, you know,” the maid said.

He knew she could well be right, but he had to know. He had to try. So he squatted down by the corpse holding the spear, stared into the empty eyes of a man who had been King of England once and was destined to be so again. And he was glad, desperately glad, that Mr Norrell was not here, because Strange knew how monstrous this magic was that he was about to do.

He took a breath and began.

 

###

 

The Once and Future King directed them to a hawthorn tree by the side of a lake in Somerset, where one moment it was a slightly drizzly and overcast day and the next it was eternal unending darkness with strange constellations overhead. The glassy surface of the water was black as ink and so smooth it seemed to reflect the stars themselves. Outside of Faerie, the young maid's dress and train of magpie feathers were gone, replaced by a simple dress of faded muslin, but the old coat remained, pulled tight around her. Of her jewels only the circlet had not vanished completely, smaller now and less ornate. She stood barefoot on the grass, leaving footprints in the frost, and seemed not to care about the cold.

It was, Strange thought, a fine thing to be back in England, even in the eerie calm of eternal night, with the colour sapped from the land by the darkness, and the twisted hawthorn nearby. It was a peaceful place, a quiet place. Almost holy, only perhaps that wasn't the right word to use in relation to Merlin, given his infernal origins. Still there was an air of quiet and contemplation, and the lingering sense that they were being watched.

Jonathan walked up to the spiny hawthorn, half-expecting to see a face or some from of shape in the bark or the twisted branches, some sign that Merlin was there, but there was nothing. He circled the tree and glanced at Mr Norrell.

“Ormskirk's Spell of Revelation?” he suggested.

Nothing worked. They tried several different spells, but the sorcerer in the tree refused to respond, and yet Jonathan knew this was the right place. It had to be. He could feel it itching at the back of his neck, all along his spine. This was an ancient place, this grove and the silent shimmering lake, but no matter what they tried nothing worked, until they were both tired and weary and beginning to lose hope.

“Perhaps,” Mr Norrell said, “Merlin is not in the tree at all.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“We cannot be sure of anything when it comes to fairy tales that have been passed down by word of mouth for centuries before being recorded. And some of these Welsh legends can be very muddleheaded. It might mean a carving of a tree perhaps, or a ancient tapestry that may by now have mouldered away to nothing.”

Jonathan Strange considered this.

“What this shows is that taking advice from a stranger in Faerie is almost always a mistake,” Mr Norrell added softly so that the young girl could not overhear. “All the fairy tales say so, Mr Strange.”

Strange glanced at the girl, sitting with her feet dangling in the water. The sight was unnerving, making him remember the serpentine monster in the water in Faerie, of that impression of teeth and gaping maw. But this lake was glassy and still; only ripples from her feet disturbed the surface, gradually smoothing out to nothing. She was using a stick to draw shapes in the mud, meaningless loops and swirls.

She was just a  _ girl _ . 

“No,” he said slowly, staring out across the lake. “Merlin is here somewhere, sir. And there are no carvings or tapestries or representations of any kind. The legend is right. He is in a tree. A real tree.” And he made a sound of frustration. “We just have to find him. Could it be we need a different spell? Something older, perhaps? More... _Welsh_?” 

Mr Norrell pondered this. “I cannot see what difference it would make.”

Strange strode back to the hawthorn tree, circled it thoughtfully. “Perhaps–” he began, and then a sharp gasp from Mr Norrell made him look up. At first he thought Mr Norrell might have had a realisation of some kind as to how they could force the ancient magician to reveal himself, but instead he was looking at the girl. Or more precisely at the marks she had been making in the mud. Deep ruts that filled up with water and then flattened slowly out into puddles, the starlight reflected in a lake made miniature. Strange had seen no meaning in them, but Mr Norrell said, his voice little more than a breath, “Where did you see those letters?”

The young maid went very still. She lifted her head, her eyes cautious and sly. “Everywhere I go.” 

Which was, Strange thought, exactly the sort of irritatingly tricksy misleading answer that a fairy would give.

“You mean you have seen them in Faerie?” Mr Norrell asked, and still there was that strange horrified wonder in his voice.

The maid flung the stick out into the lake, and the sudden ripples shattered the mirror-clear reflection of starlight. She lifted to a crouch, her wary eyes on Norrell. “I mean that everywhere I go there they are.”

“Who are you?” Strange asked, and her eyes flitted to him.

“You've asked me that question and I've already answered. Twice.”

“Very well,” he said, impatiently. “Then _what_ are you?”

She considered this. Her fingers dug deep into the mud. “I am a thief,” she told them, and there was a strange intonation to her voice which suggested the words were not entirely her own. “And a woman. And a magician.”

Mr Norrell drew in a sharp breath. “A magician,” he said, rather faintly. And Jonathan Strange sighed, because he knew Mr Norrell's views on lady-magicians. Of all the developments they had brought about in England, and there were many, lady-magicians were the change of which Mr Norrell approved the least, with the possible exception of the reinstatement of the Learned Society of York Magicians.

“A powerful one,” she said, and then added rather dubiously, “So I was told.” But as she spoke, Mr Norrell edged towards her, his movements slow and cautious as if he feared she might attack him. To Strange it seemed that he was almost trembling. A flash of genuine fear appeared in the girl's eyes at the expression on Mr Norrell's face, which Jonathan Strange could not see, but must be very terrible to strike such fear into her heart. “Don't look at me like that,” she cried out, stumbling back into the lake itself and shattering the reflection once more.

Somewhere in the back of Strange's mind a faint niggling thought whispered to him. There was something he should have realised, but what?

Mr Norrell's expression was not one of anger, but of faint startled wonder, and his voice was very quiet, the words spoken on an intake of breath. “I know who you are.”

The maid flinched. “No,” she said, her voice pleading. “No, you don't. I'm not anyone, sir.” And there was a long moment of silence so intense it was as if the air had crystallised around them. She broke it with a faint, plaintive, “ _Please_.” And finally Mr Norrell nodded and stepped away, blinking and looking exceedingly perturbed.

The maid exhaled, her breath misting on the night air. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, looking for a moment as if she wanted to cry. Then she straightened up, the water rippling around her. She had gathered the coat up so that it did not get wet, but let the hem of her dress fall into the water, the fabric floating around her on the surface of the water so that–

_On the surface of the water._

“Oh! Good Lord!” And suddenly it was the simplest, the very clearest thing, and he was a damned blockhead for not having realised it sooner. “I believe you were right, sir,” he told Mr Norrell. “There is a representation of a tree here. It is just that we cannot see it.” And he gestured out at the inky black surface of the water, so clear and untroubled it seemed only to reflect the stars overhead.

Mr Norrell's expression cleared. “Of course. The reflection.”

“I should have guessed it at once,” Strange said, smiling. “It is a form of mirror-magic, after all. Perhaps I'm losing my touch.” It was the darkness, he thought. The darkness had thrown him. Had it been daylight he would have spotted the reflection of the hawthorn tree on the surface of the water straight away and made the connection. Instead, it took him a little longer – an embarrassingly long time, really; he should have seen straight away, especially once Mr Norrell had made his comment about representations of trees.

And then he paused, wondering how on earth they were going to get to it. There seemed only one way. He sighed, shrugging off his jacket. He glanced at the maid, but she seemed entirely unconcerned by the prospect of him stripping off to his shirt and drawers. Perhaps not surprising if she had spent a large part of her life in Faerie. Mr Norrell stared at the water with a worried expression.

“Perhaps we could drain the lake somehow,” he suggested. “I believe there may be a spell in Sutton-Grove that may suffice.”

Strange considered this then shook his head. The thought of diving down into the darkness filled him with a creeping sort of horror, but there was something sacred about this quiet contemplative place, and despoiling the glass-like calm of the surface of the lake seemed somehow sacrilegious.

The water was ice-cold. He waded in, gasping and fighting the urge to leap straight back out again. On the bank, Mr Norrell looked anxious and fearful, and Strange wondered if it was because he was being left with the strange not-quite-trustworthy maid or if it was simply anxiety about finding Merlin. Mr Norrell had always thoroughly disapproved of prophesy (along with a great many other things). The Raven King was one thing, but Merlin? There could, after all, be nothing respectable about a half-demon Welsh wizard.

And than Strange looked up at the sky, at the scattered stars he had never seen before he was enchanted; at the constant unending darkness; at a handsome country house torn from Yorkshire and flung about Faerie, about England, about the entire damn world; at himself, standing waist-deep and shivering in ink-black water, dressed in nothing but his shirt and drawers, while a young woman and his former teacher looked on, and he wanted to burst out laughing because how could _any_ of this be respectable?

He dived beneath the surface of the water. The sudden grip of ice was a sudden shock to his body, an instant of pain that eased quickly as his body went numb, He felt the silty bottom of the lake beneath his hands, felt rocks and dirt, and suddenly there was nothing; it was as if the ground plunged away beneath him, and he swam deeper into the darkness, expecting to hit the bottom again, and never quite reaching it. He swam until the water around him was so black he could not see a thing. He swam until he felt the pressure of the water against his ears, until his lungs screamed for want of air, until he was no longer certain which way was up or which way down, and still he had not reached the bottom of the lake.

Perhaps the lake was bottomless. He might go on swimming for ever until he ran out of air, while Mr Norrell and the strange young maid waited for him. Perhaps he was mistaken and there was no tree concealed in the reflection. Or perhaps he would miss it entirely, and swim straight past it.

His ears filled with pressure. There was a shimmer of something in the water, a kind of current pressing his body this way and that, and he knew two things: firstly, that he was right, the tree was here, and secondly, that it didn't make a damn bit of difference because he was almost out of air and he was going to drown. In desperation, he twisted, and kicked up towards the surface, but he seemed to have lost all notion of up and down. Were those the stars, far far overhead, distorted through the lens of water? Desperate now to break the surface, he swam, searching his memory for a spell that might allow him a few moments of respite.

They were the stars. His heart lightened, the pressure on his ears seeming to ease off. He swam as fast as he could, thinking that Mr Norrell had been right; it had been a mistake to trust a stranger they found in Faerie, even one that claimed to be a Christian. Because how did they know, truly, what she was? And what had Mr Norrell seen, in those letters she had been drawing? In her face?

Something caught at his shirt, the sharp stab of something that felt like a tooth, and he thought again of the monstrous serpentine thing in the water back in Faerie. He struggled against it, waited for it to bite deeper, to tear at his flesh, but when it didn't he reached down, and his hand closed around something hard and prickly. He gave a strangled laugh underwater, coughing out the last of his precious air. It was a branch. The spikes of a hawthorn tree had tangled in his shirt, and the more he tried to struggle free the faster he was held.

He looked up at the stars, so close overhead. The surface of the water was like the glass barrier of a mirror and he could not break through it. He closed his eyes, thinking, _Arabella, I'm sorry._

And then he twisted his body around, grabbed the hawthorn branches clinging to him, and hauled himself towards the tree. The spines stabbed at his wrists, his arms, his chest and neck and face as he fought through the tangle of branches. And now the heavy sensation pressing against him was not the water, but the regard of the long-trapped magician. Merlin, who was old and ancient and barely human. The ancient magician probed at his thoughts, a strange scratchy feeling that brought up roiling memories of hot blood and the howl of battle and of an England that was something else entirely, something ancient and pagan, filled with savage heartless gods and ancient woodland.

Strange pressed his forehead against the trunk of the tree and the branches wrapped around him, spines piercing his back. The agony was excruciating, and the ancient relentless intelligence within the tree rifled through his thoughts as if they were nothing more than a pack of cards.

_Ask._

His consciousness shrank down to that moment, to nothing but the spines piercing his skin, to this act of communion between Strange and the thing within the tree. His skin, his muscles, his blood, his bones, all vibrated with the tree's single thought.

_Ask._

The question had deserted him. He could think of nothing but the pain, and the freezing cold, and the ancient magician who had him pinned, as helpless and as insignificant as a butterfly. He could not remember what he had been going to ask. He knew he was dying.

It was Arabella's face that came to him. His wife's face, surfacing out of the darkness, out of the shadows. Her wry smile, how she'd glance his way in church. The first time he ever saw her, and how he'd thought she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen, and how selfish he had been, how selfish and arrogant and stupid for failing her, and now he was going to die and she'd never see him again.

Damn him, he should have listened to Mr Norrell.

_Ask._

He asked his question. And the tree answered him.

 

###

 

On the side of the lake, the maid and Mr Norrell waited in silence. There was a sudden movement as Strange's body surfaced, face down in the water. As Mr Norrell gasped, the maid glanced at him, then sighed, shrugging off her coat. She handed it to him, and waded into the water, barely waist deep by the time she reached Strange. The lake was not deep. She towed him back to land, dragged him out of the water, and laid him down, his skin cold to the touch, his face waxy and pale, and his hair plastered to his forehead.

“Is he–” Mr Norrell began plaintively, and then Strange coughed, retched out a quantity of lake water onto the grass. He took a hacking breath, than retched again. Mr Norrell exhaled in relief, his eyes briefly closing, and the maid sank back on her haunches.

“Good God, sir,” Mr Norrell said, a high edge of fear in his voice. “What on earth were you thinking? We were quite sure you had drowned.”

“I'm not altogether certain that I was thinking,” Strange said, with a hollow empty quality to his voice.

“Did you find the tree?” Mr Norrell asked.

“There was nothing down there.” And still that helpless despair in his voice.

“Mr Strange–”

He stared up at the strange constellations above. He thought of Arabella, her hair gilded with jewels, her eyes bright and laughing. “There was nothing down there!” he snapped, and Mr Norrell flinched, dropped his gaze. At a loss for what to say, he stared at the coat bundled in his hands, thinking at the back of his mind that there was something familiar about it.

Strange pushed himself to his feet, snatched up his clothes and stalked back towards Hurtfew Abbey, his head down.

Mr Norrell looked down at the coat in his hands. “I feel,” he said, weakly, “as if I have seen this coat before.”

“It was given to me.” The maid climbed to her feet, and Mr Norrell handed her the coat. She didn't put it on, not over her soaking wet dress.

Mr Norrell was staring at her hair now, at the circlet she wore with its tiny jewelled birds. “Mr Strange thought that they were magpies. Astonishing how he can be.” He paused. “Are you really a magician?” he asked. She glanced at him, nodded warily. “Then I am afraid you may find yourself trapped here. The spell applies to any English magician who stumbles inside.”

“Ah,” the maid said. “Good thing I'm Irish then.”

Mr Norrell glanced towards the house. Strange had vanished inside. “It seems he found the answer to his question,” he murmured, “but I rather suspect it was not the one he was hoping for.”

“They never bloody well are,” she said wearily.


End file.
